Contents:

0. General notions. Rhetorical figures.

1. Old English Poetry and Prose. Close-reading of Beowulf.

2. Middle English Literature. The Alliterative Revival. Close-reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

3. Geoffrey Chaucer. Close-reading of The Canterbury Tales.

4. Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Prose. Thomas More, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Close-reading of More’s Utopia.

5. Renaissance Lyrics. From Wyatt and Surrey to Sidney and Spenser. Close-reading of a selection of Renaissance poetry.

6. William Shakespeare. The Sonnets. Close-reading of a selection of sonnets.

7. The Tribe of Ben and the Cavalier Poets. Close-reading of a poem selection.

8. Metaphysical Poetry. John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan. Close-reading of Donne’s Songs and Sonnets.

9. John Milton. Paradise Lost. Close-reading of Books IX and X.

10. Augustan Poetry. Close-reading of John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.

11. Eighteenth-Century Poetry. Close-reading of a poem selection.

12. Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Prose. Samuel Pepys’ and John Evelyn’s Diaries. The Tatler and the Spectator. Samuel Johnson and Literary Criticism. Edward Gibbon and Historiography. Close-reading of a text selection.